Year Later, Progress Since Summit Questioned

On the first anniversary of the national education summit, governors
and business leaders reported last week that they are beginning to
fulfill the promises they made at that event to improve K-12
education.

But some observers question the effectiveness of some of those
activities, and the summit participants are still in search of an
executive director for Achieve, the independent national clearinghouse
for education reform that is a centerpiece of their agenda.

Following the summit, participants created Achieve to help carry out
the commitments they made in New York.

But they have been unsuccessful in finding an executive director to
push and oversee the initiatives.

Achieve's board of directors offered the director's job to an
unidentified candidate, but the person turned it down for another
opportunity, said Patricia F. Sullivan, the National Governors'
Association's director of education legislation, who has been working
with Achieve. She said a confidentiality agreement prevented her from
revealing the name.

A search is ongoing, and within the next few weeks, the board hopes
to narrow the field to five or six names from which to make a
selection, Achieve's co-chairman, Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin,
told reporters at a press conference here last week.

Marking the Movement

Among the other commitments made at the summit, governors pledged
that their states would, within two years, set internationally
competitive academic standards, assessments to measure progress toward
those standards, and systems for holding educators accountable.
Business leaders, meanwhile, agreed to implement, within one year,
hiring practices that would require applicants to demonstrate academic
achievement through school records such as transcripts and
portfolios.

According to a 111-page report released last week that tracks summit
leaders' education reform activities since the event, 32 states have
reported "new activity and progress toward developing higher academic
standards and/or new or improved tests."

How much effect the summit had on state policymakers, though, is
unclear because most of the states had been moving ahead on setting
standards long before the conclave.

The report shows a mixed record on summit attendees' commitment to
establish hiring practices based partially on academic records. Of the
corporations at the summit, 22 have or are planning to set hiring
policies using academic records to some extent. Five had done so before
the summit, seven adopted such policies as a result of the summit, and
10 say they are in the process of revising their policies.

Business leaders at the summit had also promised to consider the
quality of a state's academic standards and student-achievement levels
when locating their businesses. The status report found that
"generally, business location decisions take years of careful research
and planning, and few such decisions have been made in the year since
the summit."

Achieve produced the report and intends to follow with annual
reports tracking the achievements of the original summit group.

Achieve's board of directors is made up of six governors and six
chief executive officers who were at the summit--virtually all of them
members of the event's planning committee. Its co-chairmen are the
summit's two hosts, Mr. Thompson and Louis V. Gerstner Jr., the
chairman and chief executive officer of the International Business
Machines Corp.

The group appears to be getting close to realizing one of its
objectives. Last week, Mr. Thompson highlighted the creation of
Achieve's World Wide Web page, which will, when completed, carry the
standards of about 30 states.

The Web site is to have a searchable database so that a user can
find out, for instance, in what grade most states first offer algebra.
Such a feature would set it apart from other Web pages that simply
provide links to standards documents, Ms. Sullivan said.

The database will be up and running as soon as she gets clearance
from each of the states' attorneys general, Ms. Sullivan said. Achieve
can be found on the Web at http://www.achieve.org.

Underwhelming Progress?

The summit's anniversary report reflects positive, if underwhelming,
progress, said Patte Barth, a senior associate at the Education Trust,
a Washington-based nonprofit group that promotes high academic
standards from kindergarten through college.

"Many of those things that they're citing as accomplishments are
good things that should happen," she said. "How much of a good thing
they are, I think could be questioned, and certainly there is a lot
more to be done."

Another of Achieve's missions is to offer states the chance to
benchmark their standards, assessments, and accountability systems
against those of high-performing districts, states, and countries.

Largely because of that charge, Ms. Barth said, the still-ongoing
search for an executive director is a liability. "They are reducing
[Achieve's] usefulness, because once it does get up and running,
they're going to be reviewing standards and assessments after the fact
because the states are going ahead; they're moving forward."

"Frankly," she said of Achieve's role as a resource center, "it was
something that was needed probably four or five years ago."